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Student Bar Association elects new leadership

Lashandra Peoples-Johnson has been elected as the president of the Student Bar Association (SBA) at The University of Tulsa College of Law, and Pierre Robertson is the new vice president. The SBA, the governing body of students at the college, promotes interaction and professionalism among students, faculty and the administration.

“My goal as president is to work on diversity and inclusion,” said Peoples-Johnson. “I want to make sure everyone is embraced and feels included.” Her first act of business was to promote students from various student organizations to presidential appointment within the organization.

For the first time in TU Law’s history, the SBA will host a monthly event called Delegate Days in which students can express concerns and suggestions for the college. “My goal is to make the law school less stressful, be accessible to students and to act quickly,” said Robertson.

Learn more about the Student Bar Association and other student organizations here.

Peoples-Johnson, originally from Dallas, Texas, is a 3L at TU Law. She graduated from The University of Tulsa with a double major in business law management and information management systems. After graduation, she worked at ConocoPhillips and Phillips 66 as a computer programmer and lead information privacy analyst. During that time, she was married and had three children. As she approached 30, she decided it was time to time to follow her passion and attend law school.

At TU Law, Peoples-Johnson has participated in Community Advocacy Clinic work finding housing solutions for people with serious mental illnesses, served as a member of the American Association for Justice (AAJ) traveling moot trial team and received AAJ’s Richard Hailey Scholarship. She also interned at the firms of Smiling, Smiling and Burgess; and Riggs, Abney, Neal, Turpen, Orbison and Lewis.

Her leadership roles in addition to serving as president of the SBA include vice president of the Public Interest Board and vice president of the Black Law Student Association.  “One of the most impactful moments of my law school journey was last year when I was able to volunteer at the Tulsa Expungement Expo. At this event, more than 1,000 people came from across Tulsa to get felonies and misdemeanors expunged.”

Robertson is a 2L who came to TU Law from Cleveland, Ohio. After graduating from Ohio University with degrees in economics and political science, he came to Tulsa through the Teach for America program. Robertson taught third and fourth grade students and decided to take a break from teaching and enroll as a student in law school. In addition to serving as the vice president of the SBA, he is also a director of the Public Interest Board, associate editor of the Tulsa Law Review, a BARBRI student representative and a member of the Black Law Student Association.

While at TU Law, Robertson has interned with the Honorable Stephanie K. Bowman, a federal magistrate judge for the Southern District of Ohio. “As an intern, I analyzed parties’ motions and wrote recommendation memoranda on a variety of civil and criminal cases. Also, I observed status conferences and settlement conferences, detention, change of plea, and sentencing hearings.”

 

 

Warigia Bowman joins TU Law

Warigia Bowman joins TU Law

The University of Tulsa College of Law welcomes Warigia Bowman as a new assistant professor of law. She will teach administrative, energy and water law.

“We are honored and excited to add such an accomplished professor to our faculty,” said Lyn Entzeroth, dean of the college. “Her experiences and knowledge are unmatched, and our students will truly benefit.

Bowman’s interests include the effects of agriculture and climate change on water resources, as well as wind and solar energy. She has published several articles in the telecommunications area and has developed significant expertise with regard to censorship and hate speech.

Will teach administrative, energy and water law.

“I am incredibly pleased to be returning to the Southwest. I am proud to be a Westerner and thrilled to be joining the faculty at The University of Tulsa School of Law,” said Bowman. “This is a fascinating and dynamic period in water, energy and natural resources. The coming decades are likely to witness a revolution in the production, use, regulation, and legal regimes with regard to all kinds of energy and water and Oklahoma will be the epicenter of these changes.”

Earned a doctorate from Harvard and a J.D. from UT-Austin.

Bowman earned her doctorate from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University where she was the Hauser Fellow for Nonprofit Management and the Oppenheimer Scholar for African Studies. Bowman holds two degrees from the University of Texas at Austin. She earned her master’s degree from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs and her Juris Doctor from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law. She holds an undergraduate degree in history from Columbia College of Columbia University in New York, where she was the Harry S. Truman Scholar for Public Service.

Bowman joins TU Law from her position as an assistant professor at the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service where she taught Field Research Methods and Theory, and Practice of Global Development. Previously, she served as assistant professor of Public Policy at the University of Mississippi and visiting assistant professor at American University in Cairo, Egypt.

Before academia, Bowman was a trial attorney for the U.S. Dept. of Justice.

Before becoming an academic, Bowman served as an honors trial attorney in the environmental division of the U.S. Department of Justice during the Clinton Administration and as a briefing attorney for the Texas Supreme Court.

She has recently published articles in The Journal of Modern African Studies, The Innovation Journal and The William and Mary Policy Review. Additionally, she has been an invited lecturer at the University of Washington, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the National Intelligence University.

Rising scholars published in prestigious law journals

From left: Anna Carpenter, Matt Lamkin and Stephen Galoob.

The University of Tulsa College of Law is a Top 100 law school that provides a dynamic doctrinal and experiential legal education. The faculty at TU not only impact students’ experiences through their classrooms and clinics, but also through publishing high-level scholarly articles, papers and opinions.

Most recently, TU faculty published or have articles forthcoming in prestigious law journals including Yale Law Journal, Stanford Law Review, Notre Dame Law Review, Arizona Law Review, BYU Law Review, University of Illinois Law Review, U.C. Davis Law Review, Constitutional Commentary, Hastings Law Journal and Lewis & Clark Law Review. TU Law’s prominent scholars include Anna Carpenter LL.M, J.D.; Stephen Galoob, Ph.D., J.D.; and Matt Lamkin, J.D.

“I am very proud that The University of Tulsa College of Law boasts such diverse and groundbreaking scholarly articles by its faculty,” said TU Law Dean Lyn Entzeroth. “Our professors provide deep and meaningful value to our law students and to the legal community.

Carpenter is an associate clinical professor of law and director of the Lobeck-Taylor Community Advocacy Clinic. Her scholarship includes empirical and theoretical work on access to justice and the role of lawyers, non-lawyers and judges in the civil justice system. Professor Anna Carpenter’s most recent article, “Active Judging and Access to Justice,” is forthcoming in the Notre Dame Law Review and another, “Measuring Clinics” is forthcoming in the Tulane Law Review (with Colleen F. Shanahan, Alyx Mark, and Jeff Selbin).

She also recently published “Trial and Error: Lawyers and Nonlawyer Advocates” in the peer-reviewed journal, Law and Social Inquiry; “Lawyers, Power, and Strategic Expertise” in the Denver Law Review; and “Can a Little Representation Be a Dangerous Thing?” in the Hastings Law Journal (all three with Colleen F. Shanahan and Alyx Mark).

Galoob is an associate professor of law whose scholarly work examines fundamental questions in criminal law, torts, contracts and professional responsibility. He is currently writing articles concerning blackmail, the nature of norms, fiduciary concepts, reparation and political legitimacy.

Galoob’s essay (with Ethan Leib), “Fiduciary Political Theory: A Critique,” was published in the Yale Law Journal in 2016. In 2017, Galoob published “Coercion, Fraud, and What Is Wrong With Blackmail” in Legal Theory; “Retributivism and Criminal Procedure” in New Criminal Law Review; “The Ethical Identity of Law Students” (with coauthors) in International Journal of the Legal Profession; and “Living Up To (and Under) Norms” in Tulsa Law Review.

Galoob’s forthcoming publications include “The Core of Fiduciary Political Theory” (with Ethan Leib) in Research Handbook on Fiduciary Law; “Fiduciary Principles and Public Offices” (with Ethan Leib) in Oxford Handbook of Fiduciary Law; “Fiduciary Political Theory and Legitimacy (with Ethan Leib) in Fiduciary Government; and “Climbing the Mountain of Criminal Procedure” in American Journal of Comparative Law.

Lamkin is an associate professor of law whose scholarship explores the intersection of health care, law and ethics with a focus on how the increasing commercialization of medical care is reshaping our understandings of disease and disability, informed consent and personal responsibility, and the role of government in regulating medical care.

Lamkin’s article, “Medical Regulation as Social Control,” was published in the BYU Law Review (2016). He has coauthored a series of articles with philosopher Carl Elliott at the University of Minnesota, including “Avoiding Exploitation in Phase I Clinical Trials: More than (Un)Just Compensation,” Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics (forthcoming 2018); “Involuntarily Committed Patients as Prisoners,” University of Richmond Law Review (2017); “Restrict the Recruitment of Involuntarily Committed Patients for Psychiatric Research,” JAMA Psychiatry (2016); and “Curing the Disobedient Patient: Medication Adherence Programs as Pharmaceutical Marketing Tools,” Journal of Law, Medicine, & Ethics (2014).

 

 

McCormick authors blog on homeland, immigrants and sanctuary

This post was first seen in The University of Tulsa Oklahoma Center for Humanities blog. Written by Betsy McCormick, Associate Clinical Professor and Associate Dean for Experiential Learning at the TU College of Law and OCH Fellow. In addition to teaching students in the Immigrant Rights Project Clinical Program, she also teaches Immigration Law and International Refugee and Asylum Law.

 

What do you think of when you hear the word homeland? If you are an immigrant or an immigrant advocate, you might think of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the federal department responsible for enforcement of U.S. immigration laws. Created in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, DHS combined the work of more than twenty different federal departments and agencies into a single department “whose primary mission is to protect our homeland.”[1] Not surprisingly, post-September 11th, a critical part of the new DHS’s protective mission was the control of immigration to and non-citizens within the United States. The Homeland Security Act of 2002 created three new federal immigration agencies within DHS – Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), and Customs and Border Patrol (CBP). While national security concerns have long played a role in shaping U.S. immigration law and policy, after September 11, and increasingly since then, the debate around immigration and immigrants has been framed as an issue of national or homeland security first and foremost.   Indeed, in the context of this debate, immigration is very often viewed as a threat to national security and the relationship between immigrants and the idea of homeland has become more fraught than ever.

Most dictionaries define homeland as “native land” or the country where a person is born.[2] Consequently, to the extent that homeland refers to the place from which a person originates, their native place, then immigrants will always be outsiders and can never be “at home” in their new countries. On the other hand, if homeland is instead seen as a place where one has a sense of belonging, comfort, and security, then the possibility that an immigrant could make a new home exists, though is far from certain, especially in our current political climate.

Immigrants to the United States abandon their homelands for a variety of reasons, including flight from persecution and other life-threatening conditions, the pull of family ties, and aspirations for better opportunities for themselves and their families. But for many immigrants, especially those who enter or remain in the United States without legal authorization, the dream of establishing a home in the United States remains elusive. This is true because of a legal regime that creates significant, if not insurmountable, barriers to immigration. There are very limited avenues for legal migration to the United States and these are narrowed further by quotas and substantial backlogs that can delay entry to the United States by years or even decades. Those without legal immigration status live in the shadows, the antithesis of the protection and belonging represented by homeland.

In addition to an outmoded and overstressed legal regime, immigrants are often unable to feel at home in the United States because of hostility and other barriers they encounter in the communities in which they settle. Undocumented immigrants are unable to work legally so are vulnerable to exploitation. They may be afraid of interaction with law enforcement so don’t come forward when they are victims of crimes and, as a result, are frequently targeted by criminals. Language barriers leave them isolated and without access to critical information about health care or education services for their families.

Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, efforts by his administration to enlist the cooperation of state and local law enforcement in immigrant policing have further undermined the sense of security and safety in immigrant communities. Many local governments and law enforcement agencies are refusing to cooperate, arguing that doing so creates mistrust in the immigrant community and has a negative impact on public safety and overall well-being.

In response to such resistance, the Trump administration has pursued an aggressive “anti-sanctuary” agenda seeking to punish state and local governments and agencies for implementing policies that are welcoming to or inclusive of immigrants, or resisting involvement in immigration enforcement. Federal courts have so far blocked the administration’s attempts to deny federal funding to so-called sanctuary jurisdictions.[3] However, during four days in late September, ICE carried out raids in ten locations around the country identified as sanctuary jurisdictions, including Philadelphia, Boston, Los Angeles, Denver and Portland, Oregon. [4] Operation Safe City led to a total of 498 arrests and was designed to send a clear message to these jurisdictions that their refusal to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement efforts will have consequences.

The battle between the Trump administration and the sanctuary cities and states offering protection and welcome to their undocumented immigrant residents is a struggle over who gets to make a home in our communities and, ultimately, who gets to be a part of the American homeland. It is a struggle that will not be resolved without thoughtful, meaningful reforms that focus limited enforcement resources on serious threats to public safety and national security, while providing some solution for those millions of unauthorized immigrants living in and contributing to our communities who pose no threat.

[1] PROPOSAL TO CREATE THE DEPARTMENT OF HOMELAND SECURITY, JUNE 2002, HTTPS://WWW.DHS.GOV/PUBLICATION/PROPOSAL-CREATE-DEPARTMENT-HOMELAND-SECURITY.
[2] SEE MERRIAM-WEBSTER.COM; DICTIONARY.COM; AND EN.OXFORDDICTIONARIES.COM.
[3] JASON MEISNER AND JOHN BYRNE, JUDGE RULES IN CITY’S FAVOR ON SANCTUARY CITIES, GRANTS NATIONWIDE INJUNCTION, CHICAGO TRIBUNE (SEPT. 15, 2017), HTTP://WWW.CHICAGOTRIBUNE.COM/NEWS/LOCAL/BREAKING/CT-CHICAGO-SANCTUARY-CITIES-LAWSUIT-MET-20170915-STORY.HTML; ALAN NEUHAUSER, FEDERAL JUDGE BLOCKS TRUMP EXECUTIVE ORDER ON SANCTUARY CITIES, U.S. NEWS AND WORLD REPORT (APRIL 25, 2017), HTTPS://WWW.USNEWS.COM/NEWS/NATIONAL-NEWS/ARTICLES/2017-04-25/FEDERAL-JUDGE-BLOCKS-TRUMP-ORDER-CUTTING-FUNDING-TO-SANCTUARY-CITIES
[4] MIRIAM JORDAN, IMMIGRATION AGENTS ARREST HUNDREDS IN SWEEP OF SANCTUARY CITIES, NEW YORK TIMES (SEPT. 28, 2017), HTTPS://WWW.NYTIMES.COM/2017/09/28/US/ICE-ARRESTS-SANCTUARY-CITIES.HTML?_R=0.